The 2009 MLB.com "This Year in Baseball" awards have fourteen categories. All but one reward achievement - best hitter, best starting pitcher, best rookie and so on. But only one category's nominations include Mr. T.
The Oddity of the Year award celebrates moments to cherish - and forget.
(To see videos for all of the ten nominees, go to the main MLB.com awards page and look for "Oddity" in the category list.)
I ranked the candidates as follows:
Strikeouts
10. Mr. T sings "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." A celebrity non-singer at the Wrigley Field seventh-inning stretch singalong is nothing unusual. I pity the fool who votes for this one.
9. Mascot Mayhem: Potato Pete levels Teddy Roosevelt. A staged event within a staged event - Washington's Presidents race against Pittsburgh's pierogis at PNC Park. The one thing that could have saved this entry is if Teddy had finally won for the first time.
8. Cubs' Milton Bradley forgets how many outs there are. This sort of thing seems to happen to some player at least once a season. And Milton Bradley involved in a controversy? Remember, these are supposed to be oddities.
Also-rans
7. Swarm of bees delays Padres game. Did not affect the game itself, only delayed it. Not even the most memorable non-human interference on this list.
6. Young Texas fan catches two foul balls during same at-bat. Once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, but when it came to foul balls and young fans in 2009, no better than third.
5. Diamondbacks fan catches foul ball bare-handed while holding child. Great play, but not even the most memorable foul ball catch this season by a father at the game with his child.
4. Astros pitcher Jeff Fulchino loses ground ball in his jersey. Now that's an oddity. But while a possibly-rattled Fulchino did give up a game-tying three-run homer to the Cubs' Aramis Ramirez later in the inning, the Astros went on to win, so this oddity ultimately did not affect the game's outcome.
Finalists
3. Indians score winning run when ball caroms off seagull.
With the score tied in the tenth and the potential winning run on second, Cleveland's Shin-Soo Choo singles towards a flock of seagulls congregating in center field. Kansas City's Coco Crisp thinks he has a play at the plate. But the ball hits a seagull, which deflects it away from Crisp, and the winning run scores.
Batted balls have hit birds before, but not very often. And how often does such a play decide a game? For my money, this play is the onfield oddity of the year.
But as a Met fan, I'm biased. Because the 2009 oddity I least want to revisit was probably the second-most publicized on this list:
2. Luis Castillo drops a popup, turning Mets Subway Series victory into defeat.
On June 12, the Mets (31-27) faced the Yankees (34-26) in the first Subway Series game at the new Yankee Stadium.
With two on and two outs in the ninth, the Mets led, 8-7. Alex Rodriguez popped up to Mets second baseman Luis Castillo. The Mets were seconds from victory.
The Phillies lost that night, meaning the Mets would be three games out of first. And in the mythical battle for New York, the Mets would be tied with the Yankees in the loss column.
Then Castillo dropped the ball.
Derek Jeter scored from second and a hustling Mark Teixeira came all the way around from first to give the Yankees a 9-8 victory.
I had the misfortune of attending this game with my blogging partner, a Yankee fan. We do a Met fan-Yankee fan blog together. For one night at least, I would have had the bragging rights.
Instead, it was mid-June, and I was already preparing to wait till next year.
Starting with the June 12 debacle (or miracle win, depending on your point of view) the Yankees went 69-33 the rest of the season. The Mets went 39-65.
A Yankees-Phillies World Series wasn't bad enough. Now, in order to keep Castillo out of the top spot, I have to root for an oddity that celebrates Phillies fans:
1. Three-year-old Phillies fan throws back foul ball.
Steve Monforto makes a barehanded grab of a foul ball. He hands it to his three-year-old daughter Emily, who promptly tosses it back toward the field. Monforto, who had been attending Phillies games his entire life but had never before caught a foul ball, smiles and hugs his daughter. The story gets national attention and the family ends up on the "Today" show.
A heartwarming story that even non-baseball fans heard about. Once again, when it comes to the Mets and the Phillies, the Phillies are the team to beat.
ESPN's Jayson Stark points out that the Mets are one of only two teams this year to receive no votes in any major award category. And the other team, the Orioles, had Adam Jones winning a Gold Glove. The way this dismal season went for the Mets, the one award they could end up with would be for the play Met fans would most like to forget.